SCP-682
by Mega-Erofan
Summary: Elphaba has been working well with SCP-682 for a couple of months now and has been making good progress but now her boss seems to be stepping in on what she be rightfully her study. She is not going to take this lying down. (To be part of a drabble series called "Secure-Care-Protect", a non-canon branch of stories centered around SCPs)
"They're doing what?!"

The shrill voice echoes from one of the offices just before a short, redhead female charges out from one of them into the hallway and starts running down the hallway, the end of her lab coat whipping behind her. An older blonde woman wearing a similar lab coat comes running out the office after her but stops when she realizes how far down the hall the other woman was.

"Dr. Woolf!" The blonde calls after her but the fiery-haired woman disappears around the corner before she can finish. "Damn it," she mutters as she leans against the wall "I'm so fired if he finds out I told her about the experiment. Damn it, Ellie."

The redhead storms down the hallway like a blood red Hurricane Katrina, causing any doctors that are in her way to leap against the walls to avoid being run over by their fellow researcher as she blazes through the hallway. They know better than to stand in this woman's way.

Everyone knew the woman very well: Elphaba Woolf, a renowned anthropologist and cryptozoologist from the heart of Scotland and she deserved such titles. After she graduated from college with a Masters in biological science, she travelled to various parts of the world, trying to find undiscovered creatures of society. She was responsible to finding a few SCPs herself before she became an official member after finding the SCP she was currently working on, SCP-682. She found him while tracking down a creature of similar reptilian nature but soon ran into SCP Agents once again. With this being the last of dozens of encounters, the agents finally took her in for questioning. After they discovered her unique knowledge and her skill in locating these evasive SCPs, they decided to hire her as the leader of the research team on SCP-682, which Ellie affectionately called him Komo because of his resemblance to a komodo dragon.

She cherished the creature very much because of his unique abilities and she was surprisingly the only human 682 did not intensely hate. It confused both her coworkers and superiors when her first interaction with Komo in the facility was walking into the testing area and sitting down to speak with him. He seemed a bit hesitant but somehow warmed up to her. None of her colleagues could figure out why much like how they could not figure out how she could find SCPs so easily in the wild, but they left it alone in the name of their research. Her ability to get close to 682 helped them to learn and understand the creature through the casual conversations the two would have. She was always willing to interact with Komo but she refused to carry out any unnecessary tests on him, fearing she would lose his trust if she did such a thing. Her colleagues understood this and refrained from having her perform physical experiments and instead had her try to pick the brain of the creature through their conversations, which made miles more progress than anything else they had done so far. Komo never gave a valid explanation of why he hated humans so much but Elphaba had her own assumptions between their conversations and her research on his potential history.

Komo was discovered deep in the Amazon rain forest in a part that not many humans had easy access to except by helicopter or hours of hiking but Ellie managed to safely navigate her way close to the area Komo was hiding in. In recent years, humans had been trying to deforest a part of the jungle a few miles away from the isolated area which drove many of the inhabitants in that area deeper into the jungle in search of safety and new homes. She theorized that Komo was one of those creatures and thus began hating humans for trying to destroy his home for no reason. She was trying to track down the Lampalugua, a large lizard commonly seen in Chile but was supposedly spotted in the jungles of the Amazon fairly recent to her arrival in South America. She was following some tracks when she was found by two SCP agents who by then knew her well from previous encounters with other agents in the field. She offered to help them locate the SCP they were looking for if they would later help her find her giant lizard but it was later discovered that the sightings she heard about were actually of 682. Both were brought to the SCP facility stationed in Argentina and she was questioned until she was offered the position of lead scientist for the research team of SCP-682. Though hesitant at first, she eventually agreed and travelled with Komo to their new home.

They developed a quick friendship when Komo discovered Elphaba was never part of the foundation before they met and was simply exploring to expand her own knowledge, something her appreciated her for as "all humans are ignorant and refuse to learn new, abstract things". He enjoyed her tales of tracking down other cryptids and was sometimes found lying in her lap as she went on about any of her favorite close encounters with her successful discoveries. She seemed to understand him better than any other humans he met and eventually grew to like the redhead's company. She helped protect him from invasive experiments her colleagues wanted to perform without Komo's permission, she kept him company on slow days at the facility, and she was stubborn when her bosses tried to transfer her position to a less qualified member of the team. She would not let Komo go without picking a fight and he liked that about her very much. She was the first human to genuinely care about him as a creature, not a hindrance or a test subject.

Ellie storms around one final corner and the research lab she was told Komo is in is in her line of sight. She quickly climbs the stairs and does not even bother to knock on the door, forcing herself into the observation room where her boss and colleagues are. Her colleagues seem surprised as is her boss, a middle-aged man in a dark suit and lab coat with graying brown hair, for a moment before he regains his composure and speaks.

"Dr. Woolf, what are you doing here? You weren't called to this lab today." Her boss states, his brow furrowing in frustration.

"What I'm doing is protecting what is mine, Capelli!" Elphaba shrieks with her prominent Scottish accent. "You know better than to have Komo in here without me present or informing me otherwise of the procedure. He's my project and you're breaking your own damn rules by not informing me of this!"

"This is a necessary test, Dr. Woolf, and we knew you would not approve of it, so I asked that you be left out of the announcement." Capelli explains. "Now get out of this room before I have the guards pull you out."

"Not until you tell me what you're doing to Komo, you rat bastard!"

A horrifying scream echoes in the room from the speakers and Elphaba recognizes it as Komo. She runs over to the glass panel, pushing Capelli aside to see what was happening, and feels her heart drop from what she sees. Komo struggles away from the three scientists in the area with him, all wearing protective attire as they try to hold a very familiar quartz crystal against him. Elphaba recognizes the crystal immediately as SCP-409, The Kiler Crystal. She remembers reading the reports as one of her close friend in the facility oversaw the tests of it and they were very uneasy to read over. The crystal would transform whatever it touches to crystal, causing great pain until the affected was completely crystallized before shattering with great force and ultimately killing the victim. She then notices Komo's legs are entirely crystallized as he screams in pain and she understands what is going on: he is suffering from the exposure.

"You bastard…" the redhead growls as her hands ball into fists "how could you do this to him?"

"His regenerative properties needed to be tested to the fullest extent, Dr. Woolf, and using 409 is the best course of action. I know you're upset because I didn't inform you of this but the information from this experiment could help in future observations of 682. You can't…" Capelli is swiftly cut off when Elphaba turns and upper cuts him. He stumbles back and falls to the ground, staring at Elphaba as he holds his sore and possibly dislocated jaw.

"So in order to get your information you have to make a poor creature suffer?!" Elphaba snaps. "He might be a monster to you and your high up bar buddies but he is a living thing like you and I. He thinks and feels like any other being, human or not. You don't know a thing about him or the other SCPs in this facility and you've never cared to know, you arrogant prick!" Another painful scream causes Elphaba to flinch but her anger only grows. "Do you hear that? That is the sound of suffering. I don't care what almighty species you think yourself to be but across all of them pain has the same sound. If you hear him and you don't understand the pain you're putting him through, you're no creature of this planet!"

She storms past Capelli and the other scientists to the door leading down into the research area, ignoring her colleagues telling her to stop, and quickly climbs down the stairs. She slips on an extra protective suit then leaps over the locked gate and glares at the protected scientists through the glass window of the suit.

"I suggest you three keep your distance or I'll take that crystal and see how far I can shove it up your arses after I break it apart!" Elphaba barks. The three scientists fearfully back away from Komo as she runs over to him. She falls to her knees beside the other and shakily reaches out to pet the creature but stops when Komo looks at her. The pain in his beady, yellow eyes is so obviously that it makes her heart throb in an equal amount of pain and her stomach do flips. "Komo…" is all she can manage to whimper out as she gently lays a hand on Komo's back.

"Why are they doing this to me, Ellie?" The creature weakly asks then spasms as a wave of pain shoots through him. "W-why?"

"…because my boss is a cruel, heartless bastard." The redhead murmurs as she gently pets the creature. "I had no idea about this, Komo. I never would have allowed this if I had known."

"I know…" Komo sighs softly. "I know you well enough, Ellie. You would never put me through this without realizing the consequences. It had to be one of your damned, idiotic colleagues." He screams out in pain again, going limp and almost collapsing but is caught by Elphaba and pulled into her lap.

She tries to comfort the other and is surprised when he suddenly starts to spasm and tremor. It was not from the pain though, it was more serious and she knew it. Seizures are one of the many things that happen to the victims of 409 after they sustained enough internal damage from the process. "Komo!" Elphaba cries out as she holds the creature against her, trying to limit the movement of the other and prevent further damage or pain. At this point, she breaks down into tears as the fit the reptilian is having finally stops, clutching onto him as if a child about to lose her closest friend.

"I'm sorry" is all she can whisper, repeating it through the rest of the painful process. She holds him tighter every time he has a seizure and tries to comfort him as the pain grows with each inch of crystallization. After an hour of this, Elphaba is startled by the sound of an explosive shattering and looks down, finding the crystallization had stopped but left Komo with severe trauma as most of the lower half of his body was gone. She glares up at the observation room, seeing her colleagues and her boss watching her from behind the glass.

"See what you've fucking done, Capelli?" She shrieks and each word is laced with venom stronger than a Diamondback's. "Do you feel so high and mighty now for putting him through this hell?! Well, do you?!" She keeps staring at the window until her boss disappears from view then returns her attention to Komo.

"It's over now, Komo, you just rest." She softly coos as she pets Komo's head gently. "You'll start regenerating soon. Just sleep for now."

"Eillie…" Elphaba is surprised by the weakness in her friend's voice but continues stroking Komo's muzzle as he speaks "you realize all these experiments they wish to perform are attempts to destroy me, correct?"

The redhead's blood ran cold, having had no idea about this. Yes, Komo was a danger to most humans but only if they invaded his space. He would be fine in an isolated area, away from humans and protected from them. All he wanted was a peaceful place to call home. She assumed her higher-ups did not understand that and wanted him terminated as soon as possible to protect the valuable human race despite there being over seven billion of them and only a rare handful of creatures like Komo. That was all she wanted when she joined this organization: to protect the rare cryptids and other strange but wonderful occurrences in this world, not have them destroyed to protect a defect species.

"I know you can't do much…because they'll only avoid your permission but…promise me you won't let this happen again…if it's in your power."

Elphaba sadly smiles and lets her hand rest on Komo's head. "I promise…"

"Good and…stay with me until I recover." Komo adds. "I want you here when I awake tomorrow…to know that I have not been killed during my recovery."

"I was planning on it anyway, Komo." Ellie sighs then settles against the wall before shifting Komo, or what was left of him, to lie against her. "Sweet dreams, my little dragon."

"You as well, Ellie."


End file.
